I heard God's voice when I was 8 years old with my mom during our bedtime routine. I was baptized when I was 10 with my two older sisters. When I was 14 I rededicated my life to Christ because I felt I had learned so much about Christ in 6 years, even though I was still an immautre Christian in Jr. High. I grew up in the church. I came to Fielder Road the summer after sixth grade and I stuck with the youth group even after the pastors and leaders in the youth group left. The Lord had his hand on me in my teen years and protected my heart from lots of things. I looked like I had it all together. But inside my heart I didn't. I may have heard God's voice as a child but I didn't make the choice to follow Him until the summer after senior year at Student Life Camp (2010).
Growing up in my teens I struggled with two major things that didn't seem so major to me when I saw and heard of people around me who partied and had sex and worse things than what I struggled with. But in reality I was just as lost and insecure as the rest, I just sought my security in a different way.
I wanted more than anything to be accepted by people. Especially by the popular crowd and by boys. But when I lost my childhood best friend that lived across the street from me to the popular crowd in junior high and it seemed like every guy that I had a crush on liked someone else, the pain of rejection began to have its tole on my heart. I began to wonder what was wrong with me and not see the beautiful girl God created me to be. I've heard that I'm beautifully made by God all my life but for the first I had trouble believing that. Maybe because it's the teenaged years that you are tested with that truth. And I failed the test miserably.
I began to hate the person I was. I guess you can say I was in a depression but no one else would say that. I hid it pretty well. I hid in my room and wrote sappy poems about the rejection of a boy or of friends. Even though I had good church friends and friends at school, I could only focus on the rejection of the popular group that I wanted desparately to be part of. I finished junior high and went through high school as that same insecure girl who pretended she was the most confident girl in the world. How I hid it? I sought worldly possessions to make me secure. Things that became idols but I didn't realize it. I didn't struggle with anything. I was a good Christian girl who just didn't like the way she looked. What teenage girl doesn't struggle with that?
I had a rude awakening senior year when my plans to go to DBU in the fall were ruined. I've been planning on going to DBU and majoring in communications since I was 13 and God completely ruined my life plans. Instead of DBU right after high school I stayed home and filled out an application for TCC. I hated this. But God gave me another rude awakening at my last church camp: Student Life Camp 2010 at Baylor University.
By my senior year we finally got a permanent youth pastor and by the spring semester a new high school pastor. He was amazing. The youth group was beginning to get back to where it was at before the youth pastors and leaders left in junior high. The new pastors were many answered prayers. I didn't get to get as close to the new high school pastor because I was a senior but I will say that he was the one God used to set me right on my journey with Christ. On a Wednesday night in our churchs worship time he confessed his addiction that came before God. He spoke of how it consumed his thoughts even when he was talking with a student and finally one night he couldn't sleep and he got out of bed and threw his gaming system outside because NOTHING could ever take God's place. My heart was beating a million beats a minute and I knew I had to confess to someone my idols and my insecurity. To let people see the hurt I felt inside my heart. That night I experienced Godly sorrow and brokenness and true repentness. That night I shared my hurts and my idols and insecurity to two of my best friends and a leader. And that was just the beginning of God's two year journey of molding me.
"As a child I heard Gods voice, but as a girl I made my choice. There is no other way for me, I am devoted to You."
That song by Jamie Grace is the story of my testimony. I have found my confidence and security in my relationship with Christ and though I have come a long way in the past two years I am still growing. I still struggle and need the help of my Savior everyday and I will still fail, but with the blood of Christ covered over me I am saved. I have hope that one day I won't struggle with insecurity ever again. I have hope that one day I will be in Heaven. But for now my life consumes living for Christ. To have faith and to love people because Christ first loved me.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
-1 Corinthians 13:13
"But the needy will not be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted."
-Psalm 9:18
"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
-John 3:16
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
-Luke 9:23
My purpose and mission is to know God and make Him known. To bring faith, hope and love to the world. <><
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